Throughout history the human population has had one link to one another, in that no matter where you may live story-telling is used as a significant means of entertainment. This fact not only breaks geographic boundaries, but time as well. Now it's not hard to imagine that in this day and age many of the stories that one culture enjoys, may also be enjoyed by several others. Things do tend to get a bit mysterious however when one looks back through time and sees that, while the exact same story might not have been told, there is a distinct similarity between one cultures tales and the next. Even in cultures separated by drastic geographic boundaries.
There are many reasons for such a phenomena, ranging from the stories sharing a common language, to Freudian views of latent sexual conflict within human beings. Many of the different theories expressed do seem to be likely, while others seem a bit far fetche
Sociological and linguistic theories are not the only ones to help fuel this debate however. There are also many biological based theories. Anthropologists, for example, insist that the same tales are found throughout the world because at this time everyone had a primitive mind, and that despite it's surroundings one primitive mind would think much like the others. This view point seems rather unlikely as it basically takes the standpoint of nature over nurture, which from a psychological view point any educated person knows that the combination of the two have a profound impact on humans.
The Riverside Anthology of Children's Literature offers many different view points on this subject. The Indo-European theory states that the tale have all come from one
d. In the end though, not one theory can completely describe the similarity of tales within different cultures. But many of the different theories t
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